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Jack Starks knows little about who he is. Nor does he know
why he's bound in a straitjacket and subjected to bizarre
psychiatric treatment. But an even more stunning fate awaits
this amnesia-stricken Gulf War veteran: the treatments thrust
him into the year 2007 - where Jack learns he died in 1993...
The
Jacket is an interesting movie that consists of elements
of Back to the Future, Jacob's Ladder, Memento,
The Sixth Sense and Somewhere in Time, and yet
forges a completely new mould for itself.
Due
to movies like The Sixth Sense and Jacob's Ladder,
there is a great temptation for the audience to suspect that
the entire movie is one last burst of energy coming from the
dying mind of a near-death Gulf War veteran. Whether that
is the case or not, I will leave you to discover for yourself.
Stark
is pronounced dead by medics in the Gulf War, only to have
been prematurely toe-tagged. Years later, while hitching,
he becomes entangled in a bit of a mess. A police officer
is dead, having been shot and Stark is found at the scene
with a smoking gun - but can't remember a thing. Because of
this he is sentenced to the loony bin. While here, he becomes
an unwitting participant in a new form of treatment - which
involves injecting the subject with drugs, sticking them in
a straitjacket and shutting them in a morgue locker. Here,
in this dark and confined space, Stark experiences the ability
to travel forward in time to the year 2007.
While
there are problems with this movie, like just about every
time travel film that's been made, it's still a lot of fun.
And, as the ending is a little ambiguous, you could argue
that the whole movie was a dream or drug induced trip anyway
(that's not a spoiler by the way). Two of the biggest problems
I had were: Why doesn't Jackie remember what Stark looked
like? And how does Jackie know that Stark was killed? Her
mother was too out of it to even know who he was, so are we
to believe that Jackie saw it in the paper? If so, she'd definitely
remember what he looked like.
Adrien
Brody is fantastic as Stark - even if he does look
a little too much like British impressionist Alistair McGowan
- or is that just me. Keira Knightley breaks away from the
usual roles she plays, proving that given half a chance she
is a great actress with more range than we've seen so far.
Kris
Kristofferson and Jennifer Jason Leigh also turn in award
winning performances.
Extras
include Project History and Deleted Scenes (a 28 minute
a 28 minute featurette which includes interviews with
crew and cast as well as showcasing a number of deleted scenes);
The Look of The Jacket (a 9 minute featurette that
looks at the design elements of the movie); and a trailer.
One
of the deleted scenes really should not have been taken out
of the finished movie as it explains something which I didn't
get with the finished picture.
Stark's
first leap into the future sees him hook up with Jackie and
he spills his guts about everything - that he is from the
past. She thinks he's a nut and asks him to leave. The next
day he zips forward to 2007 again and goes to the diner where
Jackie works. She is a little annoyed to see him but then
starts telling him stuff as though she had been researching
him. While it's easy to make that assumption, it still feels
forced. When she forced him out of her flat there was no indication
that she even remotely believed his story. However, there
is a missing scene where Jackie actually goes onto the Internet
and finds out loads of information on Stark and the doctors
at the institution - information that they use later in the
movie.
Also
there are a handful of alternate endings - one of which is
Jacob's Ladder all over again. Thanks goodness they got
rid of that!
These
nit-picks are certainly not worth tying yourself in knots
over and the end movie is thought provoking, intelligent and
well directed.
Nick
Smithson
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$17.49
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